by Hugo Damas
Besides the Mole stood, in contrast, a well-dressed man. He was wearing a tie which was probably more expensive than the whole village they were sitting in, never mind the rest of his business suit. Falk wouldn’t be surprised if he had bought the village just to guarantee some peace and good service at the village’s best dining hall.
“Pesach,” Falk greeted, and the man opened his eyes somberly, showing he hadn’t been sleeping. Just bored into half-slumber.
“Ah, Falk has arrived. Good,” Pesach said.
Pesach was The Architect. A true genius when it came to, well, architecture. He could look at any structure and know which inch to spit on to cause a collapse. That’s not how he usually employed his talent, he mostly used it to find hidden passages.
Much like every other member of the LBA to participate in the Shadow Conclave, his skills weren’t very tailored to doing well in the competition. Of course, that was an excuse Falk did not accept, though that wasn’t saying much, he didn’t accept any excuses. That was the nature of the word excuse, a lie to justify. Falk had just engineered what he needed, and he would have won if it had not been for the invasion.
“So why am I here?” Falk inquired.
“We have been busy, Falk,” Mole said, and he had to look at the Mole to make sure he wasn’t being condescended to. “Doing anarchy work and the like. Why haven’t you answered our contacts?”
“I was otherwise preoccupied.” Falk had meanwhile retrieved his ocular enhancements, so once again, he could hide any involuntary expressions. “Since when do you care if I answer them or not?”
“Since we became organized, of course.” The Architect had leaned forward, putting his elbows on the table. He was, at first glance, a portly man. It wasn’t until he flexed that one found there was more to his mass than fat. “It has always been our goal to see the world crumble down, has it not? The Beasts present the perfect opportunity. We have sought you, eagerly, because we have a great wish to see you perform acts of great destruction and mayhem.”
Falk grinned.
“Oh, I will certainly be doing a lot of that. I will bring great obliteration, of the likes no one has ever seen,” Falk proclaimed, raising his hand even while his grin subsided into a cunning smirk. “Mostly, however, upon the Beasts.”
Falk delighted in their looks of surprise.
Of course, he was dealing with highly intelligent individuals, so he wasn’t at all surprised when the Mole slumped back in his chair.
“What exactly happened inside the Beast vessel, Falk?”
“I recruited the aid of the Circus Freak and the Eye,” Falk informed them.
“The Clown?!” The magician questioned, insulted.
“He was a successful diversion, girl. The Eye made sure we found their leader, and together, we offered him our support. We explained our goal and pledged an alliance.”
“And he said no,” the Architect guessed.
“He called us inferior, he called me obsolete.” Falk struggled to retain his smirk and not show unbridled anger, but he failed. “So I shot him in the head and then made my escape. The Eye fell short of doing the same.”
“You caused the Eye’s death,” the Mole said, shaking his head. “Seriously?”
“I don’t like your tone, Mole,” Falk warned.
“Well, I don’t like the fact you killed a friend of mine.” For once, the man had actually shrugged.
“We have to be understanding,” the Architect broke in. He had turned half-sideways and was tapping his fingers on the table. Patiently. His was mind calculating things he thought outside of Falk’s knowledge or capacity. “They are in the right to believe themselves superior. Whether that is true or not is, in the end, substantially moot.”
“Not to me,” Falk snarled. “They need to know better and if that is only possible through their destruction, then so be it.”
The magician leaned in with a scowl. “So you’re a lackey of the Shadow Conclave, now? You’d make enemies of us?”
Falk glanced at the girl, trying to remember her name. It was foreign and rare and obscured by a myriad of stage names, so saying it would shut her up. He had never cared enough, but there was not enough knowledge in the world that he had to lose information.
It was in there, he just had to snatch it.
“Oh, be quiet, Jufeng.” She opened her eyes in shock, “why are you even here?” She glared angrily but he didn’t react, she wasn’t worthy of even a gloating smirk. Plus, he was too angry himself.
“Falk. I apologize for using these words, but this is madness,” Pesach called.
Falk looked back at the Architect. Was his the mind behind which everyone had rallied? Was that why he was there? He glanced over at the Mole to see a stance and disposition that indicated the presence of an easy smile, and yet, were deprived of it. He looked placid. Amanda was turning a lighter on and off, for some reason staying well out of the whole discussion. Of course, nobody could tell where Falk was looking, his optics stayed fixed on the Architect.
“I agree, you are mad.” Falk allowed his optics to whirr in consideration. “Because you have set yourselves on a collision course with me.”
“Falk. You are a brilliant man, but respectfully, still just a scientist,” the Architect said.
Falk leaned back in sudden insult.
“Excuse me?” His voice came out as if fighting through barbwire he had just swallowed.
“You cannot hope to prevail against our efforts now that we are organized. Minds of tactics and strategy will always--”
Falk stood up in a rage, punching the table to shut him up.
“JUST! A SCIENTIST???!!”
The tension in the room shot up to outer space.
Amanda and the Mole were tellingly making an effort to continue looking, respectively, disinterested and absentminded. The Architect and the Magnificent Magician switched to a more active stance, one which would enable them to jump out of the way should Falk try something.
“How long am I supposed to stand by as these ignoble misjudgments are spouted in my face!? I am the greatest mind on the planet, you buffoon! A builder! A builder like you considers himself my better??” The Architect squinted his eyes, himself insulted. “Yes, a mere builder. I can build things too, things far beyond your meager grasp of mathematics!”
“Fal--” the Mole Tried, but Falk was not done, so he slammed on the table again.
“I am a scientist, yes! I am also an engineer! And a builder! I am whatever the void I want to be!” Falk pointed his mechanical arm at him, finger stretched outright, “insult me again, Pesach! I will kill you. Pursue your efforts to aid those Beasts who had the gall to call me obsolete, who have insulted all of us! And I will bring your mighty or-ga-ni-za-tion crumbling around your ears! And then I’ll kill you!”
Falk stood there, allowing for silence to impact his words, but the Architect wouldn’t have that.
“Are you do--?”
Falk slammed his metallic arm on the table a third time, veritably breaking the hardwood like it was made of cardboard.
“I WILL HAVE MY VENGEANCE, SIR!” Falk pointed at him again. ” AND YOU MIGHT BETTER FOCUS ON NOT BEING ON THE RECEIVING EEENNDD!!” Falk managed to yell that all without his voice growing thin or changing pitches.
Almost within seconds, Amanda let out a pleasurable moan, very much ruining it all.
“Blast it, Amanda!” Falk complained, with a jolt of his head.
“I’m sorry! It’s just–auch, all that virility overcomes me. I can’t help it,” Amanda explained, half moaning.
The Magnificent Magician looked at Amanda like she had admitted to sleeping with pigs. The actual animals.
“You’ve got issues, Amanda,” the Mole said from the opposite side of the table, disregarding the fact Falk was trembling with rage.
Would they ignore him so? Now more than ever, he thought Amanda was the traitor. The way she had diffused his threats had been, he hated to admit, truly expert.
“Very well. It is perfectly clear we are not to expect your assistance,” the Architect stated.
“He’s a lapdog of the Shadow Conclave now,” the Magician spoke again, and that was the final straw.
The only ones who really knew she had crossed the line were the Mole and Amanda. He could tell by the way they twitched. Sort of simultaneously, his wrist flipped down, and a small cannon protruded from his arm, aimed at the Magnificent Magician.
She froze in fear.
“Me? The lapdog? Right now, I am the only one in this WORLD who acts according to no wish but my very own! According to my own design! Except for the leader of the LBA, and of the Shadow Conclave, I am the only one who follows no one’s bidding!”
“Bu--”
The Architect made a swift arm gesture to cut off the Magnificent Magician. He looked at Falk knowingly, having noticed what he had said.
“The Shadow Conclave has no one leader. They are a council,” Pesach said.
“Ha!” Falk looked down on the Architect. “Please, Pesach, spare me any more of your ignorance.”
He saw Amanda shift her stance at that comment, and that was how he knew. It had taken hours, but finally, he had achieved his real objective. It had all been for that surprise revelatory moment in which he would make sure whether Amanda was to suffer his vengeance.
Falk had to admit, to his very own personal embarrassment, that the disappointment in being right thoroughly affected him. He realized that, for once, he really wanted to be wrong.
“I am no longer Led By Anarchy,” Falk said viciously, but retrieved his gun. He had lost the thirst for ending the girl’s life. He felt bitter then, not angry. “I am led by Falk Goldschmidt.”
He had not sat back down since he had gone into a rage, so he simply turned his back to them and walked away.
“We are enemies then, Falk,” the Mole let him know.
“That is your problem. Not mine,” Falk spat.
“What’s to stop us from killing you right now?” the Magnificent Magician asked, with the kind of tone a sore loser would employ. Falk stopped at the door and slightly looked back at them.
“Ever wondered how these mechanical limbs of mine are powered?”
Falk didn’t see the look of realization on the Mole’s face, but he was confident he had shown it. The dirt-ridden digger knew exactly what Falk was talking about, but for the sake of the rest, he decided to add, “kill me and find out.”
Then he gestured along, beckoning her.
“But enough. Let’s go, Amanda. I am eager to taste your cordon blue.”
Amanda lifted her head in interrogation. She looked at the others, then back at him.
“I’d love to, my darling…but I am Led by Anarchy. Stay with us and I’ll cook whatever you want,” Amanda said, invitingly.
“No,” the Architect coolly said, fast as fast could be. “His choice is made. I will not open myself to betrayals. Leave, and stay out of our way.”
Falk looked towards Amanda. She couldn’t see his eyes, but he could see hers. Was she aware he was onto her? Or was she, simply, truly loyal to LBA?
“Hmpf.” Falk turned and walked away. I will do it later.
The accident had not deterred or changed Falk in any way, but people had.
His understanding of the universe was centuries ahead of everyone else, so much so he would never have developed any kind of psychological fatality like growing terrified of fire, or explosions, or most of all, science. But he did tap into the core of what made up the universe, and that was what powered his limbs.
Someone would one day dig them up from his grave, centuries in the future, and be appalled and confused.
“How did this exist back then?!”
Or they won’t find anything, because someone will have made the mistake of ending Falk’s life while he’s still attached to them, thus triggering their self-destruction.
And oh, could his tiny energy reactors self-destruct. The Mole was most likely explaining all of this as he had, of course, been present at the worst moment in Falk’s life.
If he tried, he could remember it very clearly. The roads of snow around him disappeared to show an amphitheater as he recalled the hundreds of colleagues that were sitting down, expectantly waiting for his presentation. Falk remembered the explosion as well. That moment in time when it had gone all wrong. He remembered seeing most of them too weakened by it, or dead, to run away. The ones who could, like the Mole, did not look back.
Falk didn’t look at them for long, either, he looked at his creation, to try and understand what had failed. If he died without understanding, it would be worse. He saw the leakage and understood.
“What am I doing?” Falk stopped in the middle of the snow, suddenly aware he had lost his hold on the present to think of the past. He retrieved his self-ejection pod, which was contracted into an easy-to-carry panel, and threw it on the ground. He also noticed he was surrounded by about four LBA members, none of which he recognized. Two of them, he was sure, were mercenaries.
“Insects,” the sphere began to grow, enveloping him in an iron capsule that grew and formed in abrupt and noisy spurts of movements. “You have become a hive of insects.” The thing closed around him.
Falk grabbed hold of the handles on the wall that had the big panel that worked as a visor and held on as it trembled violently. The thrusters turned the ground to water as they pushed the makeshift flying machine up into the sky.
Falk closed his eyes, having too much to think about. The Mole would tell them about his limbs, and he would suggest that they either guarantee the Beasts’s success within a week, or prioritize getting rid of Falk, because, by the end of the week, he will surely have made all the tech he has provided the LBA with…obsolete.
The Mole would not be wrong. He would be wrong, of course, in assuming Falk would share the scientific advancements with the Shadow Conclave, but Amanda, the traitor, would know that part to be false.
She knew Falk would be a priority of Griffs’, he was his real opponent in all of this, so the LBA, no matter how powerful and dangerous, had to be considered merely a playing piece. For him to manipulate.
Falk would play Griff’s game Griff’s way, and he would beat him, and that way, teach him the folly of his intellect.
His machine made use of fundamental navigation techniques, as well as a slight magnetic attuning, to head back to a secret workshop of his. He could expect assassins to show up after him in the next few days, and until it was all over. Falk could expect a certain undermining of his opinions and contributions to Shadow Conclave meetings.
It was imperative, however, to do two things. One, to surpass enemy expectations through sheer intellectual superiority. Falk had committed to memory all the names and entities that he had seen on the lists, back at Griff’s base. Griff would not expect that. Second, of course, to confuse and perplex.
Falk was going to show up at the next meeting of the Shadow Conclave like nothing had even happened. He was not going to contact the House of Magni, he was not going to oust him to any part of the Shadow Conclave.
He didn’t feel he needed to. What Falk had do was to find out what other parts there were to the Shadow Conclave. There might be more interesting entities to be aware of than just the Magni woman.
Final two points were to get LBA to focus on the Shadow Conclave, and vice-versa. And to kill Amanda.
Of course.
Falk’s arm was beginning to hurt, as was his spine, due to all the trembling and violence of motion being thrust upon him as inertia tried to keep up with his movement.
The ground below rushed up at him, or at least that’s what should be just below the layer of green plumage that the forest presented.
Being wrong about that assumption would be embarrassing
Smaller thrusters worked to level the vessel according to the mechanical requirements set by the gravity-assisted gyroscope and the magnetic directional support, so that it mathematically knew both its way to the
target and which way was down.
The large thrusters only turned on again to slow the descent, and with the assistance of the secondary ones, guided the spherical vessel into a rocky landing that nevertheless hit the target. It set down on a small clearing next to an iron cottage.
Falk waited a few minutes for his leg to stop shaking. It would be disreputable to go around with a wavering step, people might think there was something wrong with his fast-extraction vessel, or worse, with his mechanical leg.
The fact no person was around for tens of miles didn’t seem to bear relevance.
Eventually, Falk did leave and went inside the cottage.
The inside was a veritable mess, as one would expect of an eccentric inventor with twelve different workshops and a very tight schedule within which to spread chaos and violence across the world. He stood at the door for long seconds, calculating a path to his desk with the least likelihood of having him step over one of his ongoing inventions or even parts that he would, for certain, find a use for. Some day. For something.
Falk ended up kicking a few things aside, carefully, and made his way to the chair. There, he grabbed some books that were in the place he wanted to temporarily inhabit, and carefully added them to another stack. In the grand scheme of things, the books retained their exact same height, even if they were now on top of other piles of books.
Falk sat down and pushed aside a new pistol modifier he had been working on two weeks prior, it was a thing that would finally make archers utterly obsolete due to the amount of ammo it could carry, and the speed at which it could dispense it. Falk opened the drawer on the desk and dug through the mess of scribbled papers and crumpled blueprints, looking for empty space. He settled on the scroll where he had written down his latest mathematical developments on his essay about particle physics. Work in progress as far as research was concerned, but more notably, the back was blank.
Then, Falk began writing.
Falk spent many hours, without pause, transcribing everything he had read while on Grif’s base. Every contact, every affiliation, every state of their relationship to the Tech guild. While he did so, his mind occupied itself with how exactly he would get to Amanda. How exactly he would keep the Mole off his back. It took him a bit, for example, to fully remember, with full certainty, which workshops they were aware of.